1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of emergency data management systems and, more particularly, to a web enabled comprehensive data management agent for distribution of preexisting or evolving hazardous chemicals location, chemical data and responding units information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Use of computer databases for emergency response systems has expanded to include highly sophisticated and capable systems. One exemplary system, CAMEO® Computer-Aided Management of Emergency Operations, is a set of computer programs developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency to assist emergency planners and responders in dealing with incidents involving hazardous chemicals. CAMEO® is a registered trademark of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As defined by the EPA on the CAMEO® website “CAMEO® is a system of software applications used widely to plan for and respond to chemical emergencies. It is one of the tools developed by EPA's Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office (CEPPO) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Response and Restoration (NOAA), to assist front-line chemical emergency planners and responders. They can use CAMEO® to access, store, and evaluate information critical for developing emergency plans. In addition, CAMEO® supports regulatory compliance by helping users meet the chemical inventory reporting requirements of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA, also known as SARA Title III). The CAMEO® system integrates a chemical database and a method to manage the data, an air dispersion model, and a mapping capability. All modules work interactively to share and display critical information in a timely fashion. The CAMEO® system is available in Macintosh and Windows formats.”
As mentioned above, the CAMEO® system contains three modules that are further defined in FIG. 1 of the drawings. The CAMEO® Databases module 10 provides the stored information and properties for Chemical Facility Database; Local Chemical Inventories; Emergency Planning Data; Contacts; Past Incidents Database and Special Locations Database. The ALOHA® (Areal Locations of Hazardous Atmospheres) module 12 provides basic atmospheric dispersion modeling for a number of volatile substances in the chemical database. The MARPLOT® (Mapping Application for Response Planning and Local Operational Tasks) module 14 provides a mapping facility based on Census Bureau street maps. ALOHA® and MARPLOT® are registered trademarks of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Approximately 40,000 copies of the CAMEO® system have been downloaded from EPA since May, 2002. The programs are available at no cost to the user. A significant number of these systems are used by the nation's firefighters in responding to chemical accidents. According to NOAA, the ALOHA® dispersion model is the “most commonly used [atmospheric dispersion] model for first responders.”
Typically, the CAMEO® system is contained in a portable computer and deployed to the scene of a chemical accident aboard a fire truck or other emergency response vehicle. Once the chemical agent has been identified, CAMEO® provides a vast amount of information on the nature of the threat as well as possible countermeasures. FIG. 2 provides an example of some of the information available to the firefighter.
Once the substance involved in the incident is identified, the ALOHA® air dispersion model can be used to calculate the downwind dispersion under meteorological conditions 1) specified by the firefighter or 2) provided by a portable meteorological station attached to the CAMEO® computer. An example of the output of the air dispersion calculation is shown in FIG. 3.
FIG. 3 shows the plume that would result from the release of 50 pounds per minute of phosphine given a sunny day, with no inversion layer and winds of 10 miles per hour. If a meteorological station is attached to the CAMEO® computer, the plume will be recalculated every 30 seconds to reflect changing atmospheric conditions. The area 16 in the center of the plume represents the concentration determined to “Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health”, a concentration (for phosphine) of 50 parts per million. The user has the option of using other health-related threshold concentrations as the basis of the plume calculation. The outer area of the plume 18 (outside the cross-hatched segment) represents a 3-sigma confidence limit on the calculation.
CAMEO®'s mapping module, MARPLOT®, allows the plume diagram to be plotted on a street map and oriented in the downwind direction. The firefighter specifies the origin of the plume by “pointing and clicking” at the appropriate position on the screen. FIG. 4 provides an example of such a plot where the plume as described with respect to FIG. 3 is overlayed on a census map 20.
The three modules, CAMEO®, ALOHA® and MARPLOT®, communicate among themselves as the user moves through the analytical process. That is to say that inputs provided by the user and the results of calculations provided by the program are “remembered” as the user moves among the various modules. This memory can be tapped by queries to the CAMEO® programs or by examining the content of various files temporarily stored on the users hard disk.
Normally, the CAMEO® operator (who must be highly-trained in the proper application and use of the program) will provide verbal summaries via radio of key information gained through use of the program. No means are provided for real-time external access to CAMEO® data. Direct screen transfers are generally problematic due to wireless bandwidth limitations at many remote locations.
It is therefore desirable to have a data transfer agent and system which makes the real-time data from an emergency response database program such as CAMEO®, while in use at an incident, available to other responders and monitoring personnel in a web based environment with low bandwidth transmission requirements.